An Intense Overview of the React Ecosystem

Rami Sayar - @ramisayar
Senior Technical Evangelist
Microsoft Canada
@RAMISAYAR

• Introduction to React & the Environment
• Useful React Libraries
• What is Flux & Redux
• Useful Redux Libraries
• What is Relay (and other Reactive Databases/APIs)
• Useful React Dev Tools
Assumption: Beginner React Developer
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• React is a UI
*library* developed
at Facebook.
• Lets you create
interactive, stateful &
reusable UI
components.
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• React adds this weird thing to your HTML called JSX.
• Let’s you write HTML-ish tags in JavaScript to simplify creating
components.
var HelloWorldComponent = React.createClass({
render: function(){
return ( <h1>Hello, world!</h1> );
}
});
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React.createElement('h1', null, 'Hello, world!')

• Added attributes are called props and can be used to render
dynamic data.
var HelloNameComponent = React.createClass({
render: function(){
return ( <h1>Hello, {this.props.name}!</h1> );
}
});
ReactDOM.render(<HelloNameComponent name="Rami"
/>, document.getElementById('app'));
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• Render method is the only required spec for creating a
component.
• React has lifecycle methods:
• componentWillMount – Invoked once, on both client & server before
rendering occurs.
• componentDidMount – Invoked once, only on the client, after
rendering occurs.
• shouldComponentUpdate – Return value determines whether
component should update.
• componentWillUnmount – Invoked prior to unmounting component.
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• Every component has a state object and a props object.
• Functions & Objects:
• getInitialState – Return value is the initial value for state.
• setState – Sets the state and triggers UI updates.
• getDefaultProps – Sets fallback props values if props aren’t supplied.
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• Every component has a
state object and a props
object.
• Data flows unidirectionally
via the state and props
objects.
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• React can be used on both the client and server side.
• Uses a Virtual DOM to selectively render subtrees of
components on state change.
• To assign CSS classes you have to use className.
• You can use ES6 Classes instead of the createClass function.
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Create React apps with no build configuration.
npm install -g create-react-app
create-react-app my-app
cd my-app/
npm start
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• Webpack
• Babel with ES6 extensions (JSX, object spread, class properties)
• Autoprefixer
• ESLint
• Jest
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$ npm install --save-dev babel-cli babel-preset-
latest babel-preset-react
Adds ES2015-7 language features to JavaScript.

• Websites are complex and there are multiple styles for
bundling JavaScript code (CommonJS, AMD, ES6, etc).
• Webpack takes modules with dependencies and generates
static assets.
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• Webpack also comes with a few interesting features:
• Hot Module Replacement
• Development Server
• Optimization
• Caching

• React Router keeps your UI in sync with the URL.
• Features like lazy code loading, dynamic route matching, and
location transition handling are built in.
render((
<Router history={browserHistory}>
<Route path="/" component={App}>
<Route path="about" component={About}/>
<Route path="*" component={NoMatch}/>
</Route>
</Router>
), document.body)
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• react-bootstrap wraps Bootstrap into React Components.
var buttonGroupInstance = (
<ButtonGroup>
<DropdownButton bsStyle="success" title="Dropdown">
<MenuItem key="1">Dropdown</MenuItem>
</DropdownButton>
<Button bsStyle="info">Hello</Button>
</ButtonGroup>
);
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“Foundation Apps is a new framework for building web
apps. It has awesome new features like flexbox based
grid, motion-ui, and several core components for
building web apps.” https://github.com/akiran/react-
foundation-apps
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• Elemental UI is a UI Toolkit for React.js Websites and Apps
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“This is a collection of some of the most
reusable React components built at Khan Academy. […]
We're trying to make it just as easy to jumpstart React
applications with a well-tested, thoughtful, and beautiful
library of components.” http://khan.github.io/react-
components/
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Unresolved topic but check out: FormidableLabs/radium
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• React makes it easy to build reuseable and composable components (a.k.a. Views).
• React discourages bidirectional communication for the above to be true.
• This conflicts with MVC where Controller-View communication is bidirectional.

• Flux is the architecture that Facebook uses for building client-
side web apps.
• Flux doesn’t follow MVC in favor of a unidirectional data flow.
• Flux architecture is composed of four major parts: Dispatchers,
Stores, Views and Actions.
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• Dispatchers are the central hubs that manage data flow (actions).
• Essentially registry of callbacks into Stores.
• When Actions passed into the central Dispatcher, they are redistributed to
the Stores.
• Dispatchers manage dependencies between Stores.
• Stores contain the application state and logic (sort of like the Model
in MVC)
• Stores register themselves with the Dispatcher to receive Actions via a
callback.
• Actions describe state changes in the Store.
• Stores broadcast an event saying they have changed so Views can update.
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• Views are the React Components.
• React Components are composable and are typically nested in a tree
hierarchy.
• A special “App View” behaves like a controller-view and provides glue
code to propagate states down the chain.
• Events cause Views to request the State from a Store to setState() so
that render() will be executed.
• Actions describe a change and include a payload of data.
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• Several Different Implementations of Flux:
• Flux by Facebook
• Redux by Dan Abramov
• Alt by Josh Perez
• Reflux by Mikael Brassman
• Fluxxor by Michelle Tilley
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• The whole state of your app is stored in an object tree inside a
single store.
• The only way to change the state tree is to emit an action, an
object describing what happened.
• To specify how the actions transform the state tree, you write
pure reducers.
Source: https://github.com/reactjs/redux
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• Flux by Facebook
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Use react-router-redux to sync routing state with your Redux stores.
Awesome Redux List
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• reselect is a selector library for Redux
• Compute derived data => reduces size of the state object in
Redux
• Efficient way to handle computing derived data => don’t
recompute state if arguments didn’t change.
• Selectors are composable.
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• Immutable.js provides immutable collections and data
structures.
• Immutable: Once created, cannot be altered at another point.
• Persistent: Both original and mutated collections are valid.
• Structural Sharing: New collections are created using the same
structure as the original collection to reduce copying and achieve
space/performance efficiencies.
• List, Stack, Map, OrderedMap, Set, OrderedSet and Record.
• Use in combination with Redux ->
https://github.com/gajus/redux-immutable
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• Flux Standard Action is a human-friendly standard for Flux
action objects.
• Action objects must be plain JavaScript objects and have a type
property.
• They can also have an error, payload and a meta property.
• Use with:
• redux-actions - a set of helpers for creating and handling FSA actions
in Redux.
• redux-promise - Redux promise middleware that supports FSA actions.
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• Redux Thunk middleware allows you to write action creators
that return a function instead of an action.
• Thunk can be used to delay the dispatch of an action, or to
dispatch only if a certain condition is met.
• Helps you to have asynchronicity in your action creators e.g. so
you can perform API calls, etc.
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• Relay is a JavaScript Framework for Building Data-Driven React
Applications by Facebook.
• Declarative: Use GraphQL to declare data requirements and let Relay
figure out how and when to fetch data.
• Colocation: Queries live next to views. Relay aggregates queries for
network efficiencies.
• Mutations: Relay lets you mutate data on the client and server using
GraphQL.
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• Falcor is a JavaScript library for efficient data fetching by Netflix.
• One Model Everywhere: Represent remote data as a JSON graph. Treat
data the same everywhere (in memory, client, network, etc).
• Data is the API: JavaScript-like path syntax to access data. Retrieve data
using JavaScript operations like get, set, and call.
• Bind to the Cloud: Falcor automatically traverses references in your
graph and makes requests as needed. Falcor transparently handles
and aggregates requests for network efficiencies.
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• React Resolver lets you define data requirements per-
component and will handle the nested, async rendering on both
the server & client for you.
@resolve("user", function(props) {
return http.get('/api/users/${props.params.userId}');
})
class UserProfile extends React.Component {
render() { ...
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• Adds a new tab titled "React" in your Chrome DevTools.
• Shows list of the React Component hierarchy.
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• Lets you inspect every state
and action payload.
• Lets you go back in time by
“cancelling” actions.
• If you change the reducer
code, each “staged” action will
be re-evaluated.
• If the reducers throw, you will
see during which action this
happened, and what the
error was.
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• babel-plugin-react-transform wraps React components with
arbitrary transforms. In other words, it allows you to instrument
React components in any way—limited only by your
imagination.
• react-transform-hmr - enables hot reloading using HMR API
• react-transform-catch-errors - catches errors inside render()
• react-transform-debug-inspector - renders an inline prop inspector
• react-transform-render-visualizer - highlight components when
updated
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• insin/nwb - Create React apps, components, libraries and other
npm modules for use on the web with no configuration (until
you need it).
• mozilla/neo - Neo bakes in the best-of-the-bunch
configurations and setup to make developing React-based sites
quicker and easier.
• NYTimes/kyt - Every sizable JavaScript web app needs a
common foundation: a setup to build, run, test and lint your
code. kyt is a toolkit that encapsulates and manages the
configuration for web apps.
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• MERN is the easiest way to build universal JavaScript apps
using React and Redux.
• MERN Starter - A powerful boilerplate project that gives you a
solid head start on building universal React apps.
• MERN cli - A command line utility that enables you to work with
your MERN based projects easily by providing powerful code
generation and scaffolding abilities.
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• React Starter Kit is an opinionated boilerplate for web
development built on top of Facebook's React library, Node.js /
Express server and Flux architecture.
• Containing modern web development tools such
as Webpack, Babel and Browser Sync.
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• A static website starter kit powered by React.js and Webpack.
✓ Generates static .html pages from React components
✓ Generates routes based on the list of files in the /pages folder
✓ Next generation JavaScript with Babel
✓ Sass syntax for CSS via postCSS and precss
✓ Development web server with BrowserSync and React Transform
✓ Bundling and optimization with Webpack
✓ Yeoman generator (generator-react-static)
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• React Native by Facebook enables you to build on native
platforms using JavaScript and React.
• React Native focuses on developer efficiency — learn once,
write anywhere.
• Supports iOS and Android.
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• Use standard platform components such as UITabBar on iOS
and Drawer on Android.
• Apps have a consistent look and feel with the rest of the
platform ecosystem and have native performance.
• Operations between JavaScript and the native platform are
performed asynchronously.
• Communication is fully serializable, allows you to debug the
JavaScript while running the complete app, either in the
simulator or on a physical device.
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• Introduced React & the Ecosystem
• What is Flux Architecture
• Flux, Redux, Alt.js, etc.
• Introduced React Libraries and UI Component Libraries
• Introduced Relay, Falcor & React Resolver
• Introduced React Native
• Useful React Dev Tools
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tw: @ramisayar | gh: @sayar
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• https://www.toptal.com/react/navigating-the-react-ecosystem
• https://github.com/enaqx/awesome-react
• https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Complementary-Tools
• http://slides.com/cguedes/a-tour-on-react-ecosystem
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©2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Office, Azure, System Center, Dynamics and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the
U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft
must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after
the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

An Intense Overview of the React Ecosystem

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